The madness of IFA 2017 may have settled down, but that hasn't stopped Huawei from unveiling its new SoC, the Kirin 970. Under its in-house HiSilicon brand, the Chinese giant seeks to push the boundaries of what is possible with mobile AI. And yes, there are the typical SoC improvements here, too.

Built on a 10nm process, the Kirin 970 sports eight cores and the new 12-core ARM Mali-G72 GPU. There's a new dual ISP on board, too, which will offer things like better noise reduction; a 4.5G modem is also along for the ride, allowing for up to Cat 18 speeds.

The truly interesting part is the Neural Processing Unit (NPU). This addition takes the AI computing load off of the main processor cores, allowing for "25x the performance with 50x the efficiency." Basically, it can theoretically do the same AI stuff much faster than other SoCs on the market. Huawei is also opening up the platform for developers to mess around and find new ways to take advantage of the Kirin 970's capabilities.

We should see this SoC in the forthcoming Mate 10 — color me very, very intrigued.

Press Release

[Berlin, Germany, September 2, 2017] Today at IFA 2017, Huawei Consumer Business Group unveiled a new era in smartphone innovation. In a keynote address, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group revealed Huawei’s vision for the future of artificial intelligence with the launch of the Kirin 970. By combining the power of the cloud with the speed and responsiveness of native AI processing, Huawei is bringing AI experiences to life and changing the way we interact with our devices.

“As we look to the future of smartphones, we’re at the threshold of an exciting new era,” Yu said. “Mobile AI = On-Device AI + Cloud AI. Huawei is committed to turning smart devices into intelligent devices by building end-to-end capabilities that support coordinated development of chips, devices, and the cloud. The ultimate goal is to provide a significantly better user experience. The Kirin 970 is the first in a series of new advances that will bring powerful AI features to our devices and take them beyond the competition.”

After years of development, Cloud AI has seen broad application, but user experience still has room for improvement in areas such as latency, stability, and privacy. The goal is for Cloud AI and On-Device AI to complement each other. On-Device AI offers strong sensing capabilities, that are the foundation of understanding and assisting people. Sensors produce a large amount of real-time, scenario-specific, and personalized data. Supported by strong chip processing capabilities, devices will become more cognitive of user needs, providing truly personalized and readily accessible services.

The Kirin 970 is powered by an 8-core CPU and a new generation 12-core GPU. Built using a 10nm advanced process, the chipset packs 5.5 billion transistors into an area of only one cm². Huawei’s new flagship Kirin 970 is Huawei’s first mobile AI computing platform featuring a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU). Compared to a quad-core Cortex-A73 CPU cluster, the Kirin 970's new heterogeneous computing architecture delivers up to 25x the performance with 50x greater efficiency. Simply put, the Kirin 970 can perform the same AI computing tasks faster and with far less power. In a benchmark image recognition test, the Kirin 970 processed 2,000 images per minute, which was faster than other chips on the market.

New developments in AI require joint effort across the entire value chain, involving tens of millions of developers, and the experience and feedback of hundreds of millions of users. Huawei is positioning the Kirin 970 as an open platform for mobile AI, opening up the chipset to developers and partners who can find new and innovative uses for its processing capabilities.

What is it with Huawei's stubborness and unwillingness to put Snapdragon chips into their phones?

Kawshik Ahmed

Snapdragon doesn't support a chip after 18 months (that's why Nexus/Pixel phones only get 18 month software update).
If Huawei use their own chip then they could continue to support the device for a long time (if they wants)

Stu

Android One phones get 18 months of software updates. Nexus/Pixel phones are closer to 24 (+ the additional year of security updates).

Huawei doesn't really support their devices long term. I think if there's any benefit to using their own chips, it's that they get fairly smooth performance despite the skin, as well as strong battery life.

MJ

Weird, I have owned a number of Nexus devices and now a Pixel XL and they get TWO YEARS of OS updates (and there years of security updates every damn month) which is the best in the Android world, They use Snapdragon chips. Huawei has average OS update support and one of the slowest to go to new versions of Android.

I agree Qualcomm should support chips their chips longer but it won't cause Android OEMs to offer updates longer. Fortunately, they do document their chips well and get the best custom ROM support.

tigerberry

Again I would just like to point out that my Honor 6, a 2014 phone, shipped with KitKat and the last OS update I had was Marshmallow. TWO YEARS of OS updates. And it actually got Marshmallow sooner than a lot of phones by other OEMs.

I'll give you the security updates though, they were slower and they stopped with the 2016 July update.

MJ

Nice but we are talking about today... Huawei was one the slowest OEMs to update their devices to Nougat. I am sure their expanded lineup doesn't help these days.

Lorinczi Thomas

my j5 2016 should get nougat soon (yeah), and is based on snapdragon 410, which was launched in 2013. so the 18 months term is confusing me.

Kawshik Ahmed

Actually, No it not very confusing and take the 18 months as an 'usual' sense not 'literal' SD 410 launched on December 2013 (basically 2014) and Nougat is a OS from 2016, so it's not that impossible to support an old OS.

On the other hand take the Nexus Player for example which launched in Novenber 2014 with Lolipop and a Intel SoC and still getting OS update and now running Oreo. Which other device of that time still got Oreo, even the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 didn't got it which launch in the same time.

Now you may say it's Google only Android TV device that's why it's getting software updates. But that's not completely true. If you investigate almost every official Android TV devices are running chips from Mediatek, All Winner and Nvidia, so can give longer OS update. Only ATV that had SD chip was Razer Forge which stopped getting update after Marshmallow.

They have a few phones that used Snapdragon in the past. But they own HiSilicon, they have no reason to use Snapdragon. They can cut down on costs and optimize the chips better. Plus there's the fact that the Kirin 960 was better in most aspects than the SD820/821 it competed with.

Andrés

Isn't it obvious? Snapdragon is from USA, so it has USA-built-in bugs and undocumented features for surveillance and spying.

It is 25x faster in processing AI stuff than other SoCs right now. It also is 50x more efficient in processing AI stuff. Otherwise it is 25% faster than the old chip. Anyway, that is still very impressive numbers!

So what actions actually count as "AI stuff"
Like google assistant processing?

AdamH

Not really, I think it used for rendering, image processing or other heavy data computing that require cloud or full usage of processor. Now there is dedicated chip for that.

Roy

Among other things yes.

Martin

Don't buy phones from those muthaduckers! Updates are so slow and my P9 was treir flagship a year ago... Still no word which devices will get Oreo... (Hope they update my phone because it had a premium price and is very capable of running even Android 10)... They are another OEM that's releasing 100 models a year and forgets to update them... ;)

Exynos

Add to that the memory lottery
They mix between lpddr3 lpddr4 emmc5.1 ufs2 and ufs2.1

balcobomber25

Most manufacturers haven't announced yet which devices are getting 8.0.